Susan L. Carruthers
Author and Historian
making do
coming Soon
Imagine a world in which clothing wasn't superabundant – cheap, disposable, indestructible – but perishable, threadbare and chronically scarce. Eighty years ago, when World War II ended, a textile famine loomed. What would everyone wear as uniforms were discarded and soldiers returned home, Nazi camps were liberated, and millions of uprooted people struggled to subsist? In this richly textured history, Carruthers unpicks a familiar wartime motto, 'Make Do and Mend', to reveal how central fabric was to postwar Britain. Clothes and footwear supplied a currency with which some were rewarded, while others went without. Making Do moves from Britain's demob centres to liberated Belsen – from razed German cities to refugee camps and troopships – to uncover intimate ties between Britons and others bound together in new patterns of mutual need. Filled with original research and personal stories, Making Do illuminates how lives were refashioned after the most devastating war in human history.
Published by Cambridge University Press
News and Reviews on Susan’s Previous Work
Read the new Dear John Review in Publishers’ Weekly
Dear John Reviewed in Wall St. Journal
Dear John Review in London Review of Books
Susan Carruthers on Dan Snow’s History Hit Podcast for Dear John
Time.Com publishes Dear John excerpt
Dear John on History News Network
Susan Carruthers discusses her research at the Library of Congress
Susan Carruthers in Researcher Spotlight at Library of Congress
Reviews For Making do
This is a necessary inoculation for anyone prone to nostalgia. Making Do is proof that clothing is always a reflection of the human condition- especially, when those conditions are dire. Carruthers deftly brings the historic significance of wartime down to the human level, with entertaining interludes and well-researched stories that will make you question your own relationship to your garments.
Avery Trufelman, host and producer of Articles of Interest
From Land Girl breeches to demob suits, austerity chic to Dior’s New Look, Making Do follows the fascinating story of bodies in motion, through air raids, rationing, and recycling, as a nation sought to dress the part for war and peace.
Alan Allport, author of Britain at Bay: The Epic Story of the Second World War, 1938-1941
Garments are our social skin. This engaging, intimate history of the social and political life of clothing and footwear reveals human vulnerability, resilience, and adaptability in a way that changes the way we think of the postwar world.
Joanna Bourke, author of What It Means To Be Human
Meet the author
Susan Carruthers is a professor in US/International History at the University of Warwick, where she has taught since 2017. Her work focuses on representations of war and the ways in which individuals, and societies more broadly, make sense of conflict and its aftermath. She is the author of several books, including The Good Occupation, The Media at War, Cold War Captives and Winning Hearts and Minds. Her expertise in the media and war, cold war culture, and colonial counterinsurgency spans the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.